How to Win a Presidential Election

Similarly, Republican presidential candidates often make the mistake of playing conservatives in their own base and independents off of one another as if they’re competing with each other. The successful Republican presidential candidate
recognizes he needs both of these groups to complement each other in order to form a coalition of voters capable of winning the election. He doesn’t play them off of each other, but rather secures one and then launches an effort to reach the independents without having to defend his rear flank.

This explains why Republican candidates who win over the conservative base in the primary win presidential elections, and Republican candidates that fail to do so don’t.
The latter ends up fighting a two-front war all the way to November, triangulating himself
against both the Democrat (and the biased media) and his own base. That candidate then becomes embittered by his base’s unwillingness to trust him just because the Democrat is so bad, so he’ll sanctimoniously send his surrogates out to essentially lecture these people to accept a crap sandwich and like it.

By the way, that strategy has never worked.

What has worked is a candidate whose conservative bona fides are tested in the primary and accepted by the majority of conservatives in the grassroots. Once securing the nomination, that candidate is now free to speak to the issues that drive independents to the polls because his rear flank is secure. He’s playing offense in November, and even trying to pick off soft supporters of his opponent.

For further proof this is correct, look no further than the election results themselves. Since 1892, only five incumbent presidents have failed to win re-election, and the only one that didn’t face a divided base was Herbert Hoover.

But Hoover did face the Great Depression.

William Howard Taft faced a third party challenge from fellow Republican Teddy Roosevelt in the general election. Gerald Ford in 1976 (Ronald Reagan), Jimmy Carter in 1980 (Ted Kennedy), and George H.W. Bush in 1992 (Pat Buchanan) each faced credible primary challengers and each lost the general election. Because they never won over their own base, they never were able to focus on reaching independents in the fall campaign.

Presidential candidates cannot win an election fighting a two-front war. That’s especially
true for Republican candidates, because they face the onslaught of Democrat P.R. disguised as media coverage as well.

There’s even more data to support this.

I will focus on just one key voting bloc since I’m the most familiar with this group—white born-again Christians. Since the mainstream media’s secular bias makes it beyond ignorant when it comes to covering this group, exit polling going back decades refers to them by several terms such as “evangelicals” and even the “Religious Right.” Not all born-again Christians are evangelicals, and some are evangelicals without even knowing what that term means. Some born-again Christians are Catholics and some are mainline Protestants. But this is a group that a Republican needs to win, and win by a wide margin in order to win the presidency, because on average they represent about 40% of the American electorate in any given presidential election.

John McCain beat Barack Obama by 15 points among born-again Christians, but that
was nine points less than the 24-point margin George W. Bush got over John Kerry in 2004, and Bush needed every one of them to pull off a close election. Had Bush’s base deserted him even marginally, Kerry would’ve been elected. A marriage amendment on the ballot in the key swing state of Ohio turned out born-again Christians heavily in that state, thus giving Bush the margin he needed to win the Electoral College. By turning out his base, that helped Bush at least compete with Kerry for independents.

In 2000, Bush beat Al Gore by 15 points among born-again Christians, but got a higher turnout of those voters than McCain got in 2008. That was enough to withstand losing the popular vote to Gore, and losing late-deciding independents who flocked to Gore because of an Election Eve story about Bush’s 1976 drunk driving arrest.

Meanwhile, Obama overcame a 15-point loss among born-again Christians to McCain by massively turning out the Democrat base, including the traditionally sketchy youth
vote.

Conclusion #1: The actual data confirms the GOP base has much more influence in the outcome of presidential general elections than either the Republican Party establishment or the liberal media wants to admit.

Conclusion #2: Since establishment candidates Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney have won three of the last four contested presidential primaries, the conservative grassroots in the GOP base has not done a good enough job of capitalizing on its cache.

Here’s the election-by-election breakdown:

1976

Ford 50%

Carter 50%

1980

Reagan 61%

Carter 34%

1984

Reagan 78%

Mondale 22%

1988

H.W. Bush 81%

Dukakis 18%

1992

H.W. Bush 59%

Clinton 21%

19% of born-again Christian vote went to Ross Perot, and the vast majority of that likely would’ve gone to H.W. Bush had Perot not been in the race.

1996

Dole 49%

Clinton 43%

2000

Bush 57%

Gore 42%

2004

Bush 62%

Kerry 38%

2008

McCain 57%

Obama 42%

So what does this data mean for 2012? That’s the question we’ll answer next week.

Steve Deace is a nationally-syndicated radio host for the USA Radio Network. His radio program has been featured in major media such as Fox News, CBS News, ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, The Weekly Standard, and Real Clear Politics among others. He's one of the top 100 talk show hosts in America according to Talkers Magazine. In 2013 he wrote the second-most shared column of the year for USA Today, defending "Duck Dynasty" and traditional American values. In addition to being a contributor for Conservative Review, USA Today, and Town Hall.com, Deace is a columnist for The Washington Times. He is also the author of the book "Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again," which includes a foreword by David Limbaugh and is endorsed by a who's who of conservative leaders. He lives in Iowa with his wife Amy, and their three children: Ana, Zoe, Noah You can follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.